Q'orianka Kilcher, 15, plays Pocahontas in Terrence Malick's The New World. Mainly a singer, she appeared on Star Search (she lost) and later had a part in Ron Howard's The Grinch. She is descended from a Peruvian father, her mother is Swiss and her second cousin is folk singer Jewel. She was born in Germany, raised in Hawaii and is home-schooled. She doesn't watch a lot of movies, though she enjoyed Colin Farrell in Tigerland and saw one other Malick film, The Thin Red Line.
Were you mostly barefoot during shooting?
I was always barefoot. It was really painful, my legs, running through the tall grass in my first opening shot, my legs were all scratched up and bleeding, and my feet had every poking thing possible. And I was scared I might step on spiders. But it helped me because it threw me back into the realism of the 1600s. I would do it all again.
Terrence Malick is very secretive. What did you learn?
He's really there for all his actors. Almost every evening he would talk to me about what we were doing tomorrow. We never rehearsed anything. We would just start filming, and we wouldn't stop filming until the camera was rolled out. There was something like a million feet of film shot. We would just be doing spur-of-the-moment things, just whatever felt right. If he had an idea we would do it, and if any of us had an idea, we would just try it, and just do whatever and see what worked and what didn't. After that I might be spoiled.
What was the audition process like?
I went probably 15 or 20 times. I never knew what to expect. They would tell me to suddenly do a traditional feather dance or play my flute or sing or try to memorize something in 10 minutes, to see if I was able to withstand the pressures of it. It was the longest and hardest audition process I've ever gone through. Even if I didn't get the role, I would have learned so much.